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All Blacks

Carter not buying Deans' line

Ace All Blacks five-eighths Dan Carter wasn't buying into former Crusaders coach Robbie Deans' line that no side in the world would have competed with New Zealand in Auckland on Saturday night.

So far as Carter was concerned New Zealand still had to get better and it was still early in the season.

"We've got to get better each week, teams are going to analyse it a lot," he said.

Carter said the All Blacks were happy with the effort but they realised they could still improve.

"If we were a bit more patient with the ball we could have scored a couple more tries I think so the boys were in good spirits tonight and pretty keen to attack with the ball in hand and I guess at times they were a little bit guilty of trying to push it a little early and we bombed a couple of tries because of that."

Carter added that there had been a lot of attention paid to the side's defence and to keep such a dangerous attacking side scoreless was a credit to that defensive effort.

"Your attack is only as good as your defence because you have got to keep teams out," he said.

Carter said he still couldn't work out why he passed a ball to wing Hosea Gear which resulted in a try being lost when Carter, had he gone alone would have had enough momentum to get across the line.

"It would have been nice getting a wee five-pointer there at the end but that was one of the couple of tries that we bombed tonight. It's not a bad situation to be in where we have that much room to improve," he said.

Carter said the game had been open and fast and the lungs were blowing a lot more than in the first Test between the sides the week previous.

And Carter was again impressed with the performance of his halfback Aaron Smith.

"Everyone knows the quality of his distribution skills but I think we saw his running game tonight. He's very fast and sharp, an attacking player around the rucks and mauls and I thought he did extremely well tonight and showed dimension to his game," he said.